1 comments about Bye Bye Black Sheep.

1. U.S. Library of Congress # 78-112803, at least seven printings in small hardback by 1978, with 172 pages in English; published by "Printing Dynamics, Inc." of Phoenix, AZ. The author was a Japanese fighter pilot during World War II. He shot down 16 Allied airplanes. He details how he joined the Japanese naval air force in 1943, recounts how he shot down various Allied planes -- including his downing of the U.S. Navy's top air ace: "Pappy" Boyington -- and how he met Boyington after the war. As Boyington's air unit was known as the "Bah Bah Black Sheep" squadron, Kawato impishly titled his book: "Bye Bye Black Sheep." Kawato describes how he was finally shot down, swam to shore, and captured by the Australians. After the war he joined the Japan Self-Defense Air Force. I met him in 1991 in Seattle, and he was gracious in autographing a copy of his book for me.

No comments about Yuki, Temple Dog: How a California Pound Dog Became Guardian of a Japanese Buddhist Temple.

No comments about The Rainbow Through the Rain: A Tale of a Japanese Prisoner of War.

No comments about Fishmerchant's daughter: An oral history.

No comments about Divided Self: A Biography of Arishima Takeo (East Asia Series).

No comments about Irish Writing on Lafcadio Hearn & Japan: Writer, Journalist & Teacher.

1 comments about Fragments of a Past: A Memoir.

1. This book is almost perfect. It is a story of Eiji Yoshikawa's life as a child and as an adult. It will rouse all readers and completely absorb them into the story, just like all other stories by Eiji Yoshikawa.

2 comments about A Far Valley: Four Years in a Japanese Village.

1. Brian Moeran and his family spent four years in a rural Japanese community, watching as pots are made, attending school award ceremonies, community festivals and funerals, but mostly listening (and drinking, a great deal of drinking) as their neighbors talked about their lives, their families and their communities.

   Moeran is an anthropologist, and was doing his field work in a neighboring community at the time, and he brings an anthropologist's observant eye to his diary of daily life in rural Japan.

   This book compares quite favorably to Alan Booth's classic _The roads to Sata_, and John Morley's _Pictures from the water trade_ in the ``a gaijin looks at Japan'' genre. If anything, it improves on those works by telling the tale of one community through sixteen seasons, and being peopled by individuals with whom the author formed lasting relationships. Further, Moeran's Japanese wife provides us with an occasional peek into the Japanese woman's world that is missing from most other books of this type.

   The community Moeran describes is small and isolated. It is not representative of Japan as a whole (Moeran, in his introduction, tells how urban Japanese friends found his tales of rural Japan almost as exotic as a westerner does). Some may consider this to be a drawback, but I did not. The book still introduces us to some of the aspects of ``Japanese-ness''.




2. First off, let me say that the author gives a very honest and emotional picture of ONE Japanese valley. The fact is that Japan's ideals and norms can't be judged by the study of one village OR two villages OR three villages. Also, the characters are, in some cases, composites of more than one person, names have been changed and so on, but the events DID happen.
   After saying all that I have to state that this is a great book. It is full of humor, passion, happy interaction and tragic events. And, yes, lots of drinking. Smoking too.
   The book is based on three diaries that Brian Moeran kept during his four years living in Japan. The book is broken down into three parts, each made up of chapters which are either one sentence long to many pages long and this gives the story an interesting and timeless flow. In fact, the book is only 254 pages yet seems much longer.

No comments about Promises Kept: The Life of an Issei Man.

No comments about Kyogoku Tamekane: Poetry and Politics in Late Kamakura Japan.